In the same remarkable document Mirabeau raises his voice against the harsh laws which arbitrarily deprived Prussians of freedom to leave the country.  The tyrannical prohibition of emigration excited his vehement protest, and he proceeded also to denounce to the new king the right of seizing the property of deceased foreigners, and demanded for burghers the freedom of purchasing the estates of nobles.  He urged Frederick William to abolish the prerogatives claimed by nobles and the helotism of all who were not noble, and suggested that judges should be appointed for life and justice rendered free of expense.

III.—­For King and People

It was chiefly the meeting of the notables which had hastened Mirabeau’s return to Paris.  He felt that his proper place was in the centre of the great events announced and begun by this convocation.  After the undignified and inglorious prodigality of the previous reign, which had laid the foundation of serious financial vicissitudes, the young King Louis XVI. had brought with him to the throne the private virtues of a good and honest man, but not the qualities of a sovereign.

Though economic to excess himself, he nevertheless suffered to exist and even to increase around him those dilapidations which at last ruined the resources of the state.  He had no confidence in himself, and Mirabeau respectfully reproached him with his fatal timidity.  Nothing was done either to increase revenue or diminish expenditure.

The possessors of privilege and representatives of personal interest, the courtiers, the great lords, and the parliaments strenuously resisted all reforms and then drove from office the best intentioned, the most virtuous, and the ablest ministers whom the young king, in the sincerity of his patriotism, had chosen on his accession, in deference to public feeling.  Among these ministers were Malesherbes, Turgot, Necker, and Calonne.

Mirabeau returned to Paris on January 27, 1787.  He at once published that famous “Address to the Notables,” in which he denounced the whole corrupt system of finance and in which he demanded local provincial administrations.  This and his “Denunciation of Stock-jobbing” made great impression on the public mind.

Nevertheless, the “Denunciation” displeased the government, and the author was much persecuted.  He learned that he was to be arrested and sent, not to the Bastille, but to a remote provincial fortress, where he would have been lost to public notice.  So he escaped from Paris to Liege, whence he again attacked the administration of Calonne and the policy of Necker, declaring that loans should have been effected on methods less onerous for the state.